1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to fabricating patterned media and, in particular, to an improved system, method, and apparatus for pattern clean-up during fabrication of patterned media using forced assembly of molecules.
2. Description of the Related Art
E-beam lithography can be used to form patterned bit media structures for hard disk drives. However, when the features being exposed by the e-beam lithography system approach the resolution of the lithography tool, typically there will be unacceptable variations in the size and positioning of the patterns created. These variations cause problems, such as noise, for magnetically reading and writing on patterned bit media structures.
For example, one ideal shape for a “lift-off” e-beam pattern is depicted in FIG. 1. In this process the resolution of the lithography tool is sufficient to form uniform dots 11 in a symmetrical array as shown. However, as illustrated in FIG. 2, features that are smaller than the resolution limit of the lithography tool form irregular shapes 21 that are non-symmetrically arrayed. Although these methods are workable for some applications, an improved solution for a system, method and apparatus for pattern clean-up during fabrication of even smaller patterned media would be desirable.